Editorial: Happy Friday the 13th

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We like to think of ourselves as educated, civilized men and women, don’t we? We like to pretend that our iPhones and our organic diets and our fancy cars somehow make us somehow better than our filth-dwelling peasant ancestors of the distant past.

But let us ask you something: How many of you saw today’s date on the front of this paper and felt your hackles rise somewhat? How many of you abandoned plans to travel, to take a chance on some financial matter? How many of you knew, deep in the marrow of your being, that today wasn’t the day to risk anything?

For today, your primal, hunter-gatherer self no doubt explained to your modern Wi-Fi enabled self, is Friday the 13th. This is the day the cosmos has fated always bring the coin toss down in your favor, to always weight the dice toward snake eyes.

Going back to the Norse Gods, the number 13 has been linked to bad luck. Twelve mighty Viking Gods shared a banquet in Valhalla when trickster God Loki brought the total to 13, and the party to chaos. Closer to our own era’s deities, we all know what happened when Judas became the 13th diner at the last supper.

As to how Friday came to be bad luck, we have no idea. We happen to like our weekends.

But someone got it into their head that Friday was bad luck, and its confluence with the 13th has long been dreaded as doubly unfortunate. And we won’t even get into a certain hockey-masked killer who makes his mark on young campers every Friday the 13th.

But if you are one of those superstitious types, you’re in luck. Today is the only Friday the 13th you’re going to have to suffer through this year.

But this being today, that good luck won’t last: there are three Friday the 13ths next year.